Falling into the Abyss

Giveaway chapter, selected by Alya for the CG10K contest—-Bonus Chapter (2/2)

Ethan screamed as he witnessed his mother rapidly decaying in front of him. His body seemed to suddenly go out of control, and he staggered backward, tripping over Samuel’s leg. The people around him, including Samuel, seemed to be unable to see what was happening in front of them, and they sat like puppets. Ethan grabbed Samuel’s arm and tried to pull him up, but his body remained immobile as a rock, with his eyes wide open and unblinking. However, Ethan’s mother was still crawling towards him, rotting pieces of meat falling from her face and arms and long traces of stinking mucus dragging behind her.

Ethan no longer cared about pulling Samuel anymore. He got up from the ground in a hurry and rushed towards the gate, and no one stopped him. However, as soon as his hand touched the door handle, a sharp burning pain burst out from his palm. With a cry of pain, he raised his hand and found that his skin had been burnt. But under the black burnt skin, some strange tentacles were wriggling, quickly mending the wounds on his body, and new flesh grew at speed visible to the naked eye.

He turned and rushed in Tanisiel’s direction. The priest was still dancing tirelessly and seemed so far away. The beautiful sound of the harp traveled from all directions, leaving him nowhere to escape.

“Tanisiel! Tanisiel!” Ethan yelled his name and strode forward with all his might. However, the space in front of him suddenly distorted and elongated. No matter how he ran, he could not shorten the distance between him and the priest. His voice seemed to be absorbed by the sound of the harp surrounding him, unable to spread even a meter.

It was a nightmare, a living nightmare. Ethan slapped himself in the face, trying to wake up.

At this time, a nobleman in the audience wearing a black veil suddenly stood up.

In this seemingly frozen prayer hall, this person was probably the only one who was moving other than Tanisiel in the distance and his “mother,” who was still struggling to crawl towards him.

Ethan looked at him, unsure of whether to be happy or alert. He felt an ominous premonition of the coming events, causing him to stand still and stare at the man.

It was a tall man dressed in a beautiful black velvet robe, taking steady and elegant steps towards him. There was something frightening about him, but Ethan could not describe the familiar and disgusting feeling.

The man stopped about ten steps in front of him and slowly lifted the veil on his face.

Ethan froze.

In front of him was a 70-year-old Earthling. Although he was 70 years old, he was not considered old as the average lifespan of mankind was now over a hundred years old. When he was young, he should have been a very handsome man, but because he always frowned, deep wrinkle marks had formed between his eyebrows, and he looked a little rigid and serious. However, Ethan still liked him very much. He thought that he was an organized, efficient, respectful, and upright person.

He was the Energy Bureau’s secretary-general Abel, Ethan’s former boss.

“Why are you here?”

“I’m here to see you,” Abel said, but his facial features and face shape suddenly began to change subtly but rapidly. Under Ethan’s shocked eyes, the face quickly turned into Tanisiel’s face, then his father’s face, and finally the face of a strange Egyptian man, before growing blurry, as if it had been erased by an eraser.

A sense of chill ate away at Ethan’s body. He looked at the man in black in front of him and finally recognized him.

He was the man in black who haunted him in his dream.

Ethan looked back in a panic, only to see that Tanisiel was still dancing far away, playing the enchanting music. Was this reality or a dream? Why did nightmares appear one after another?

“Have you ever thought about who proposed to research and develop the second universe, Red Earth, or even Project Zero? Why your tasks were related to the Energy Bureau? Who chose your tasks?” The empty face of the man gradually morphed into the features of the director. He looked at him with a serious and solemn expression, just like the usual expression of the former director when he talked with him. “Have you ever thought about how the Ophiuchus Alliance learned about Project Zero, why it happened to send Roland, who was your type, to carry out the task, and why I couldn’t attend on that day to receive the foreign guests, and instead had you receive the foreign guests for me?”

Every word spoken by the old man was like a sharp sword, piercing through barriers which Ethan couldn’t understand. What he thought was fate and coincidence in his life had become a carefully arranged chess game in the mouth of this familiar yet unfamiliar stranger.

“It was you……” Ethan’s voice was hoarse, and he was almost unable to utter a complete sentence. His brain had become a mess, as numerous memories flashed past quickly, all covered with a predestined haze. “Why……secretary-general……why me?”

“Have you not recalled who I am? My child?” The director approached him with firm steps, his eyes full of an oppressing pressure. “I said that after all the gods left the universe, I was the only ancient existence here, walking in the world as a human. I watched the people on Earth evolve from a group of cave-dwelling apes until they were conquering the whole galaxy and watched the birth and death of civilizations on different planets. I have been waiting for a moment, waiting for the reincarnation of the forces of Order to weaken, waiting for the opportunity to welcome back the gods to occupy this rich universe. And you, my child, are the key to the universe of Order that I made myself, the sharp blade of a body made by the forces of Order to accommodate a soul of Disorder.”

At this time, he had approached Ethan, and a thin hand like an eagle’s claw gently stroked Ethan’s cheek. It was cold and sticky, like a snake crawling through his skin, and goosebumps surfaced on Ethan’s back. Those evil blue eyes were staring at Ethan. For a moment, Ethan seemed to see a blood-red tentacle growing from his face, like a tongue wrapping around his neck……

“My dear Ethan,” the voice of the “secretary-general” resounded in his mind, “I’m your father.”

Ethan felt as though his neck was being strangled by invisible red tentacles and had difficulty breathing. He covered his throat with his hands, but he could not relieve the feeling of suffocation.

“No, you are not.” Ethan struggled. “My father is Adrian Eldridge!”

“You shouldn’t deceive yourself anymore. You know in your heart that Adrian Eldridge has never been your father. He was just a pawn who helped me raise you.” There was a bit of arrogance in the “secretary general’s” face.

“Ethan’s” mother now appeared behind him. Her hand, which was rotten to bone, was placed on his shoulder as she removed the stud from his ear. The corpse’s bodily fluids soaked his clothes and corroded his skin, causing his back and neck to itch and even cause bursts of pain to appear.

“Baby, it’s time for you to kneel down and accept his blessing.” A twisted voice emerged from her broken throat, and Ethan could no longer see a tinge of the previous gentleness and beauty from her.

Every word buzzed into Ethan’s ears, impacting all his past memories. His father took care of him but hardly smiled towards him. His mother left home and left him for various reasons. Ethan never had a birthday party, and only his parents didn’t have time to show up when he had a performance on the school’s stage. The young him didn’t complain much. He just looked at other people’s parents kissing their children and wiping the paint off of their faces after the performance with a slight pain in his heart.

When the students complained that their parents were too strict to let them play too late at the other students’ home, Ethan, who was standing nearby, looked envious. His father never worried about whether he stayed out too long, but Ethan would go home on time every night to have dinner with his father.

He always believed that his parents loved him, but they were just too busy. Especially his father. Although he rarely talked to Ethan at home, he would still smile at him as long as he was a good child.

So, his dad must have loved him. As long as he was a good child, his dad would love him.

However, if he had loved Ethan, then why didn’t he even attend his graduation ceremony? Why didn’t he ask Ethan what he wanted to do in the future? Why didn’t he ask him if he was in love like other parents? Why didn’t he visit Ethan’s apartment after Ethan left home, although he was in the same city?

Now, after hearing this, it seemed that everything suddenly made sense.

As for love, there probably was still some love. But as for hate, he should have also hated him a lot……

His fiancée was pregnant with a child of unknown origin before they shared the same room. If his proud father hadn’t loved his mother so much, he wouldn’t have been able to bear the shame, right?

It was as though Ethan’s heart was screwed tightly shut, and it was in so much pain that he was unable to speak. He was a monster, from the beginning, from the moment he was born.

From the beginning, he did not deserve to be loved.

His body felt so heavy that he could hardly bear it. Something in his body was about to burst out, and he fell to his knees due to a sharp pain from his back. He tried not to cry out, but he saw his fingernails elongate and turn black, and the black lines spread from his arms to his palms.

At the same time, a sense of extreme fear was encroaching on his consciousness. All of a sudden, he felt so tired that he couldn’t move a finger. He wanted to find a place where there was no one else, a dark, closed corner, and hide himself.

The world was so chaotic and dangerous that he needed to weave a cocoon and wrap himself in it.

The impulse was so strong that he did not notice that his tentacles were gushing out behind him unconsciously, engulfing himself in layers until only a pale face was left outside.

He saw the body of the “secretary-general” in front of him deforming and swelling. His facial features melted together, and a blood-red tentacle soared into the sky, whistling in the wide hall. The large hand dripping mucus gently lifted his face, forcing his green eyes to stare at the “face” without facial features.

“Ethan, it’s time for you to mutate. It’s up to you whether you choose to live as my son and follow my will, or to die as quickly as your mother after a brief period of beauty.”

As he spoke, he gently twisted Ethan’s head to force him to look at his mother, whose eyes had rotten so much that they were hanging out of her eye sockets and the body wriggling with countless maggots.

His green eyes suddenly widened. That was precisely the deepest fear buried in his heart.

Ethan suddenly realized that he was now entering his deepest nightmare, the “pupa” period—His mother said this period lasted for two weeks before his adulthood.

He let out a beast-like cry, and more black tentacles gushed out, the sharp blades shooting towards the crouching chaos in front of him. His tentacles were like a mass of mucus, but the tall monster didn’t seem to react at all, the red tentacles swatting and breaking through his tentacles.

Ethan roared in agony. He saw the red tentacles stretch out in front of him and heard the voice of the crawling chaos, Nyarlathotep, ringing in his mind, full of the purest evil. “That dancing Eve man is also a gift I chose for you. Do you like it?”

“Shut up! Shut up!” In the face of the overwhelming threat, Ethan could no longer control the fear receptors in his body, and he had only one idea in his brain—escape. He enveloped himself with his tentacles layer by layer as if he could isolate himself from the chaotic world outside. It was an irresistible impulse, an animalistic instinct that dominated everything.

He needed to hide, to hide deeply.

T/N: Thank you, Alya, for selecting ABYSS chapters as one of the prizes in CG10K contest!